The Japanese Culture Center was established in 1977 in Chicago by Aikido Shihan (Teacher of Teachers) and Zen Master Fumio Toyoda to make some of the martial arts, crafts, and philosophical riches of Japan available to the public. Today the JCC continues this tradition, offering classes in over a dozen martial and cultural arts.The Center is not a museum where lifeless objects are displayed; it is a school where living skills are passed on person to person from generation to generation. You become an active participant in arts that have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We invite you to visit and experience the richness and complexity of knowledge cultivated around the world.

Upon entering the Center you will see a wooden panel on which are carved the characters “Ten Shin Kan,” or “Place of the Universal Mind/Body/Spirit”. In the spirit of the traditional training halls, the JCC is a true “dojo”, or “house of the way”.